About this Research Topic

Background

Immune inflammation encompasses neuroinflammation, influenza, and acute lung injury. However, with changing human lifestyles and increasingly severe environmental pollution, among other factors, the incidence of immune inflammatory diseases has noticeably increased. As such, preventing immune inflammatory diseases has become a significant challenge for the global medical community. For treating neuroinflammation, current therapeutic drugs include corticosteroids, immunosuppressive drugs, immunoglobulins, and others. However, applying these drugs also presents certain challenges, such as creating individualized treatment plans, controlling unwanted side effects, and ensuring long-term safety of the treatments. Therefore, continuously exploring and developing more precise and effective therapeutic drugs is a crucial research direction under the current treatment methods.

Herbal medicines and metabolites derived from them have a long history of treating immune system diseases. The theory and practice of herbal medicines have shown that numerous herbal medicines possess immune regulatory effects and are widely used in treating immune system diseases. However, the scientific evidence for herbal medicines' effects on diseases linked to immune responses and inflammatory processes remains limited. The evidence for clinical efficacy and safety remains even more limited and all this is often hampered by a poor description of the material under study.

Systems biology is an interdisciplinary research field integrating computer science, engineering, statistics, biology, and other disciplines. It is applied to the study of immune inflammation. Through high-throughput gene expression, proteomics, metabolomics, and other technical means, we can deepen our understanding of the biological characteristics, regulatory mechanisms, treatment strategies, and other issues of immune inflammation, enabling us to better diagnose and provide basic support for the treatment and prevention of immune inflammation.

This Research Topic welcomes submissions using omics-based methods from the following areas:

• Clinical Prognostic Study focusing on the Treatment of Immune Inflammation (Including Acute Lung Injury, Influenza, and Neuroinflammation) with herbal medicines;

• Research on the pathogenesis of immune inflammation (including acute lung injury, influenza, and neuroinflammation);

• Explorations of herbal medicines' formulas, extracts, or active small molecules for the prevention or treatment of immune inflammation (including acute lung injury, influenza, and neuritis)

• Studies on the chemical composition and active metabolites of herbal medicine prescriptions or extracts in the treatment of immune inflammation (including acute lung injury, influenza, and neuritis) using omics-based approaches (for example, metabolomics)

• Transcriptome or Proteomics to explore the mechanism of herbal compound or extract or active small molecule to prevent immune inflammation



Please note the following:

1. All the manuscripts submitted to this project will be peer-reviewed and need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here). Importantly, please ascertain that the ethnopharmacological context is clearly described (pillar 3d) and that the material investigated is characterized in detail (pillars 2 a and b).

2. All studies must use a therapeutically realistic dose level and the data must be reported on the basis of the amount of extract administered. Single-dose studies are not accepted unless they focus on a species/compound not yet studied in detail, and can be justified on specific ethical grounds (e.g. the 4R rule - Reduce, refine, replace – responsibility, see the Four Pillars).

3. Articles on clinical trials will be accepted for review only if they are randomized, double-blinded, and placebo controlled. Statistical power analysis or a justification of the sample size is mandatory as is a detailed chemical characterization of the study medication (ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205.).

4. A detailed chemical profile of the extract and pharmacognostic definition of the botanical drugs used is essential, as defined in the ConPhyMP statement 2022.

5. In silico studies like network analyses or docking studies are outside of the scope of the section and of Frontiers in Pharmacology, unless they are combined with an in vitro or in vivo analysis of the material under investigation.

Keywords: Immune Inflammation, Herbal Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Compounds, Omics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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